This short epistolary communication holds far more than may appear at first. It is both an inner and outer work of
faith and love that is described.
First, John, who calls himself an Elder (a title of honor rather than age in the Jewish community, and usually described one who sat on a council or sanhedrin in a particular area, implying judicial function in a particular community, although it came to mean a more or less official position in the church later on), greets in epistolary style the elect woman and her children. This is addressed to one family, yet is obviously meant to be read to or by the entire congregation in her city and region.
John greets the lady (often symbolically understood as the Church) and wishes her mercy and peace as they walk in love and truth.
Truth is perceived, in part, as a gift of love -- from GOD to us, and the wellspring of both is faith -- assumed as a given foundation in his epistle. The primary commandment of GOD is love, and His
gifts come to us as a result of this in lives, our
minds and our hearts. But he emphasizes that love implies obeying His commandments, as we have known from the Beginning.
The only ones John singles out to be excluded from the Christian fellowship are the deceivers, or antichrists, who proclaim that Jesus Christ did NOT come in the flesh, the true Son of GOD, yet man fully and completely. (These were some of the Docetists and Gnostics, who proclaimed He came into Jesus body only between the Baptism in the Jordan and the Crucifixion, or even that his fleshly body was only and appearance or illusion and not real in any sense at all). The lady is warned against receiving them into her household, or giving them shelterand food (as was the custom to give to travelling teachers at that time), as this would involve her and others in their errors and the fruits thereof.
John closes with the hope he will soon be able to see her, and speak face to face those things it is not fitting to communicate by letter. Then their joy will be complete. He sends greetings from her elect sister's children.
This
epistle ultimately warns not only against those false teachers, who would mimize GOD's love for man, and the importance of the real incarnation, suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, but asks us not to entertain those thoughts ideals and ideas in our own minds,
lives and hearts. If we doubt Jesus's humanity, we could doubt the possibilities he came to show us for own lives and those around us -- a wicked work, indeed. But love and
truth overcame these possibilities of error, and mercy and peace are the gifts they bring, with faith and love the greatest of these.
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